INTERSECTION

I live in a major metropolitan area. Most of the people I pass by daily, I will never see again, so different than in the small towns I grew up in where you'd never see anyone new. You get used to anonymity living in a larger place. There is some comfort to it, even. You don't expect connections.

So in this major metropolitan area, with hundreds of thousands of people zooming around, crossing paths, moving on, I get a call in the morning from my daughter's small school. She would not be receiving her lunch that day, the school secretary told me, as the person who delivers the lunch service had been in a terrible car accident. He was OK, but the accident was serious. The school would find something in their kitchen that would make do for MissEight that day. I thanked her for letting me know, and asked her to pass on my best wishes for a speedy recovery to the delivery person.

Later in the day, I received an email from my middle son's small school, which is about five miles away from my daughter's and not at all related. A senior there, a young man getting ready to graduate and move on to his first-pick choice for college, had died in a car accident, and the school wanted to make sure the all the student's parents knew to be able to talk about it with their children at home.

It was the same accident. The boy died, the man lived and is OK, though terribly shaken. My heart aches for both families, though I never met either one. The intersection and how the news came to me reminds me that in this swirl of cars and rush and people that we will never see again, there are so many, many stories and connections, both joyous and sad, mundane and profound.